If you know much about us, you know our pets (and other animals) are a big part of our lives. While we're not officially a non-profit charity organization (oh I WISH I had those tax deductions!!), part of the reason I work engineering and real estate is so I can finance our efforts.

We're THOSE people. You hear about them but don't meet them in person often. No kids of the furless variety, all of ours are VERY furry and in a variety of colors and attitudes. We have a crazy number of cats and dogs, and they're all well taken care of. I think those cats eat more shrimp and tuna than I do in any given year.

The tradeoff for what we do? Hairballs on the floor, a short lifespan on scratching posts and a LOT of scooping litter of some of the stankiest creations known in the animal kingdom.

But we also get endless amounts of entertainment. Watching them play (we even get some interspecie action since some of the cats and Chihuahuas actually LIKE each other), affection that doesn't end, and lots of unique personalities. Don't let anyone tell you "they're just dumb animals", because only a person that doesn't know animals would ever say that.

Each of our pets is totally unlike any of the others. Preferences for where and how they like to sleep, who comes over to beg for a piece of steak (it's actually a cat that is FAR worse than the dogs on that one), how they meow and bark, and the list goes on.

And while we could never get them to sign a contract with us, we have one with them. One that guarantees that someday we're going to get hurt. A unilateral agreement to take care of them from when they enter our lives until they take their last breath.

Today was one of those contract days, the hurt came quickly.

Violet has been with us for 11 years. She arrived as a scraggly kitten dumped at the top of our driveway with two mom cats and four other kittens. We were catless at the time, and knew that if they went to the shelter they might live for 24 hours at best, so we kept them. ALL of them. The garage became a cat shelter and that's the start of how we got to where we are today.

Violet loved to sleep faceplanted on the office bench soaking in the sun's warmth. She had a favorite little stuffed fish that she loved to play with. At night after she'd eat she'd run to and fro in the laundry room, causing the rugs to get all bunched up by the door, and if we didn't check, a rug would be in the water dispenser and create an overflow.

But that rat bastard Cancer didn't give us any warning that he was coming for Violet. She was fine yesterday, but struggling to breathe this morning. Expecting some kind of respiratory infection, the X-ray showed something that didn't look right on Violet's throat and we headed from the local vet to Cincinnati's Medvet to further assess. A few hours later the news was not good. A mass on her larynx was making it extremely hard to breathe. The odds of her making it through the night weren't good, and even the best case prognosis was MAYBE gaining her another year of life, and not the best quality life at that. Apparently cats and upper throat problems rarely have a good outcome.

So we fulfilled our part of the contract. We'll have one less bowl of dinner to make tonight.